Cos putting highfliers on fast track

MUMBAI: Fast-growing companies and the ones diversifying are putting in place mechanisms to ensure that there is a steady supply of leaders within the organisation. The companies have learnt the importance of high-performing manpower and are now trying to get the highfliers off the ground in a record time.

International metals major Vedanta, for instance, has a fast-track programme called ‘The Stars of Business’ and has initiated a global leadership programme this year. About 25 employees were exchanged between the company’s Zambia and Indian operations under the project.

There are two key differences between the fast-track programmes in the fast-growing companies and the traditional ones. Firstly, the percentage of fast-trackers in these companies is much more than that in the traditional organisations. For example, at Pantaloon, fast-trackers consitute 70% of the total number of employees and at ICICI Prudential (sales), they represent 40%. However, in HUL’s fast-track programme, only 20% of the total managerial recruits in a batch are fast-trackers.

“We have to make people ready to take on the responsibility of handling a team of 50 to 200 people in six months. And at the rate at which we are growing, we need a steady supply of leaders,” says ICICI Prudential’s human resource chief Judhajit Das.

Secondly, the time taken to qualify as a fast-tracker in these companies is also less than what it used to be in the old companies. At Tata Administrative Services (TAS), an employee is required to attend one-year training module that includes both classroom learning and field visits. In HUL, it takes at least a year to identify a high-performance lister while, in practice, it could take as many as 2-3 years. In these new-age companies, this period can be anywhere from one to six months. At Pantaloon, for instance, while a fast-tracker in the store manager level could take a month for training, a mid-level executive could take six months. “

After this training, a store manager is expected to handle a store that gets approximately Rs 50-crore revenue annually. However, the candidate should have two-years work experience,” says Sanjay Jog of Pantaloon.

The catch to these super fast-track programmes is whether the purpose of being a part the elite cadre gets diluted, as the number of intakes and the training period varies from what the more established companies practice. “They are smart people who short-circuit the path as they are growing rapidly in a fast-growth segment. So, more number of people doesn’t mean that they are diluting the programme,” says Korn/ Ferry International’s country head and MD Deepak Gupta.